Monarch Tractor is looking to improve access to its autonomous, all-electric tractors.
The agriculture equipment and technology manufacturer aims to build an autonomous, electric global tractor standard, Praveen Penmetsa, chief executive officer and co-founder of Monarch Tractor, said during a March 20 panel at Nvidia GTC.
“We need a piece of equipment that every farmer can afford to buy, not just the large farmers,” he said. “If you look at the mix, 90% of the tractors that are sold are small tractors that are under 100 horsepower.”
In February, such tractors represented 11,301 units, or 86.4%, of tractors sold, according to the Association of Equipment Manufacturers. These monthly tractor sales declined 7.9% year over year, while total farm tractor sales declined 6.9% YoY.
Partnering with fellow OEMs
In an effort to provide more autonomous, electric, farm tractors into the ecosystem, Monarch has established licensing agreements with Case New Holland (CNH) Industrial and other OEMs. The OEMs are putting Monarch’s technology into the units of the second-largest tractor OEM, Penmetsa said.
Case IH tractors totaled $644.5 million in for sale listings during the month of February, the second of any manufacturer behind John Deere’s $3.1 billion in for sale listings, according to Sandhills Global market data. Case IH tractors were 15.5% of tractor listings in February.
“You’re not limited to Monarch devices, if you work with Monarch because we are licensing our hardware architecture to other OEMs,” Penmetsa said. “If you deploy an application on our ecosystem, you’ll be able to deploy it on [CNH] tractors as well, so you’re not limited to our devices.”
Monarch flying forward
While Monarch’s current goal aims to place autonomous tractors in the hands of the average farmer through its own manufactured units and licensing agreements for its technology, the company continues to work on both large and small solutions, Penmetsa said.
“We’re always going to build tractors, and we’re going to build bigger ones and smaller ones, but at the end of the day, the scale will come from our partners from a stack standpoint,” he said. “We have taken the hard part of building a completed hardwire platform, the sensor stack and the autonomy stack that sits on top of it. We have taken that friction point off and that is what is needed to scale farming.”
Monarch’s current reservation model, the MK-V, ranges in price from $74,998 to $98,998, with the $90,000 model starting with Monarch’s “full autonomy stack, full electric and has a battery that is larger than your Tesla,” Penmetsa said.
Monarch also has financing arrangements with American Farm Financing, CNH Industrial Capital, and Stearns Bank, according to the company.
Registration is now open for Equipment Finance Connect, the nation’s only dealer-centric equipment lending and leasing event, which will take place May 5-7 in Nashville, Tenn. Learn about the event and free dealer registration at EquipmentFinanceConnect.com.
